In a spy movie, the protagonist or the villain, sneaking in to a secure facility, might trick an eye scanner into letting him or her through a locked door. But over in Japan, the dystopian-sounding iris scan is now being used for more pedestrian purposes: to pay for a new pair of socks or the latest manga.
A new phone, released this month by Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Docomo, comes with iris recognition technology. Fujitsu’s Arrows NX F-04G phone allows users to unlock websites and access stored information using only their eyes, scanned by the phone’s front-facing camera. This means users can store credit card information and then pay for online purchases simply by staring into the screen.
At 55,728 Japanese yen (about $450), Arrows is the first commercially available phone to use this technology. Iris scanning is not new, but the technology has long been prohibitively expensive. The Arrows iris scanner meets standards set by the FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, an industry consortium dedicated to developing technical specifications for password-less online authentication. FIDO offers a protocol companies can follow to make sure their technology can interact with others. Members include Google, PayPal, Mastercard and Visa.
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